New Beginnings

I remember when I first moved to this city. I remember driving down the Pacific Highway towards Sydney, a stretch of endless blue sky running like a ribbon across the horizon. As I drove, I remember feeling like I was leaving my old life behind me. A life of sweet immaturity, innocence and naivety, where safety and security lay embedded in friendships and familiarity. But in front of me, lay nothing but pure possibility.

Before my very eyes, this city rose up from the horizon. A postcard of skyscrapers and on-ramps which twisted in and out of each other. What lay between them were streets I'd never walked down, faces I'd never seen or spoken to. Once again, I was a no one. Just another face in the crowd. And it felt like freedom.

At the toll gate, I exchanged my life of sweet immaturity, innocence and naivety. Like spare change, I cashed it in without a second glance and in return, received a life of value and responsibility. A life of adulthood.

Sometimes, I worry I didn't give that moment what it truly deserved. That my desperation to finally live this life of 'value' blinded me from appreciating what it was I was giving up. Sometimes, I find myself remembering it and there's a pull in my heart which I think resembles yearning. That comfortable old life, where the streets are familiar and the faces are my friends. Where responsibiliy is just another word brushed under the carpet and immaturity is worn with the same pride as a Purple Heart.

Sometimes, I do feel too young for this. Like I flew the nest too soon. I got what I wanted. Value, responsibility, adulthood. But what I cashed in at the toll gate was more than just my old life. It was everything I both did and didn't do. Foolishness. Travel. Adventure. And now the days begin early and finish late and everything that happens in between is just a desperate attempt to make it to the weekend. And it is as if every day I am demanded the one thing I can not give - life experience.

But some days, when I look out the window and see this city rising up from the ground like it did the first time I saw it or I'm walking down the street or driving down the road, without warning, I realise. This is just the beginning. The first chapter, the first page, the first paragraph and what lies beyond it is a story riddled by possibility and potential.

No, coming here was the not the end. It is the beginning.

(Image Credit: thesartorialist.blogspot.com - April 30, 2009)